Poet’s Intuition

Archive for the ‘Poems’ Category

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

– The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground–from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up–the clouds are split
Asunder,–and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!–the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;–still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

The mountain towers above wide, open plains
From its peak, paddy fields appear etched in stencils
The Straits’ water glimmer in the distance
Mists that hover and linger above the canopy of dipterocarp trees
Dissipate with the rising sun

The passage of time swirls around the mountain
Yet it appears timeless

Centuries ago, it beckoned travelling ships
Carried by trade winds enroute to the East
To anchor, to explore this land enshrouded with mystery
Now its visitors gone, yet remnants of their sojourn dwell for longer

The mountain
Conquered by man, it seems
Long, winding road leads up to the summit
Where strawberry fields and rose gardens once a legacy
Now a resthouse and a museum to be

In the foothills, forgotten tales, stories aloft
A flooding river during the monsoon and wilting cornstalks during the dry
Visions of a fair, petite woman watering her potted plants
While children play on the tarmac road shared with little billy goats
Unperturbed by small snakes sometimes slithering past, unnoticed amongst the fallen leaves

What’s left?
Memories, bitter sweet
What’s left?
Graveyards of ancestors
A rickety bridge across a creek
Clouds hovering above this ancient land
Bearing witness to the affairs of man